Creating a Solid Brand Identity for Clients
Helping clients create a memorable and effective brand identity is a valuable service offering for web designers looking to grow their business and create new revenue opportunities. A strong brand identity fosters trust, emotional connection, and brand loyalty, leading to long-term scalability for your client’s business. By establishing yourself as a brand expert, you can guide your client through developing a cohesive and consistent digital presence, strengthen the impact of their website, and enhance the overall user experience to improve conversion.
What is brand identity and why is it important?
Brand identity is a combination of all the ways a brand communicates with an audience. It establishes the essence of the brand and its core values, enticing potential customers and provoking emotional connections with the business.
Brand identity encompasses messaging and visual elements like color palette, logo, art usage, and typography, all of which create a recognizable and cohesive brand image. A strong brand imparts a sense of trust and familiarity on its target audience.
When explaining the importance of a solid brand identity to clients, highlight the following benefits:
It differentiates their company from competitors
It quickly communicates their business personality and shapes customer perception
It empowers visitors to establish an emotional connection and promotes positive brand association
It drives conversion and profitability for their business
Even when clients understand the benefits of having a strong brand identity, they may not know how to go about developing one. That’s where you come in. As you step into the role of brand expert, you’ll want to incorporate a process to move things along.
Ask open-ended questions
When you onboard a new client and get to know them and their business, asking open-ended questions is likely already part of your process. Open-ended questions are thought-provoking conversation starters that can deepen your understanding of your client’s needs and pain points. Prompting an exchange where the client gets to paint a picture of how they see their brand, in turn, helps you as you execute their vision.
The following are a few questions to add to your arsenal:
If your brand or business was a person, who would they be?
As abstract as this question may seem, it can get the wheels turning for a client to think outside the box of terminology and analytics and more toward what the essence of the brand is. It also prompts them to share their mission statement alongside actual characteristics that can give you a sense of what their tone of voice and overall brand personality should be.
What would you like people to associate your brand with?
At this point, they can tell you what perceptions or emotions they want potential customers to walk away with when they experience the brand. This may prompt them to offer examples of other brands they resonate with, which you can then pull inspiration or insight from while building their site.
What do you currently like or dislike about your brand identity?
This is where a client can point to elements they align with as well as any challenges they face with their brand identity. In addition to identifying elements you should tackle, their response will also tell you what requires immediate attention and what can be handled later.
Fill in the gaps
Once you’ve gathered relevant information about the brand story, the work begins. Here is where you’ll determine what new elements you need to create and update. For instance, if your client already has their brand name and logo, you can work together to choose typography that fits their existing brand personality, a color palette that both matches their logo and incorporates the desired customer sentiment, and imagery that tells their story.
You can also guide them on how to establish a compelling tone of voice, use language that resonates with visitors, and optimize site copy for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.
Encourage continuity and consistency
Creating a solid brand identity is an ongoing and iterative process. While your time working with a client may be limited, you can set them up to continue developing their content and business around the elements you worked hard to solidify. The overall goal is to ensure key elements are represented on every surface as they interact with their audience.
An effective way to do this is to encourage them to deliver consistent messaging across all platforms. From the website’s content to social media posts and marketing campaigns, maintaining a unified brand voice strengthens brand recall and cultivates strong brand association.
Social media serves as an open line of communication between your client and their audience and can direct traffic to their website. As such, followers should get a sense of the brand identity from their first interaction with the brand, beckoning them to explore more and visit your client’s website.
Pro tip: Set your client up with Bio Sites from Squarespace, a hub that houses all of their links in one place and drives traffic to their website. Bio Sites integrates the same design features as Squarespace websites, so your client’s branding and aesthetics are unified across platforms, delivering a consistent experience to followers.
Your role as a web designer can be expansive when you apply your knack for design to developing brand identities for new and existing clients. A well-defined brand identity lays the foundation for future growth and scalability, ultimately shepherding clients toward their bottom line.
Want more?
Check out Squarespace Circle, Squarespace’s program for professional designers. Along with exclusive content, discounts, and other perks, Circle brings professionals together from all across the globe to exchange advice while connecting with new clients and collaborators.
